Storage devices

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FAT16

  • FAT16 file system is widely used by DOS (DR-DOS, MS-DOS, PC-DOS ? ??.), Windows 95/98/ME, Windows NT/2000/XP operating systems and is supported by most other systems.

    Main features of FAT16 are the file allocation table (FAT) and clusters. FAT is the core of the file system. To increase data safety it is possible to have several instances of FAT (there are usually 2 of them). A cluster is a minimum data storage unit in FAT16 file system. One cluster contains a fixed number (some power of 2) of sectors. FAT stores information about what clusters are free, what clusters are bad, and also defines in what clusters files are stored.

    Maximum size of a FAT16 file system is 4 gigabytes, and the maximum number of clusters is 65525, the largest cluster being 128 sectors. Usually cluster size is selected as minimum possible so that the resulting number of clusters is less than 65526. The larger the partition size, the larger the cluster has to be. Most operating system incorrectly perform with 128-sector clusters, thus reducing the maximum FAT16 partition size to 2 gigabytes.

    Note
    • Usually the larger the cluster size the more disk space is wasted.

    Like many others, FAT16 file system has a root folder. Unlike for others, its root folder is stored in a special place and is limited in size (standard formatting produces a 512-item root folder).

    Initially, FAT16 had limitations to file names that could only be 8 characters long, plus a dot, plus 3 characters of name extension. However, long name support in Windows 95 and Windows NT bypasses this limitation. OS/2 operating system also supports long names, but does it in another way.
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